Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

"Were they tied up after he died?"

Lu Zheng frowned. "The murderer slit her throat before tying her hands and gag her? That doesn't make sense. If it was to control her, they should have tied her up first and then killed her."

"So the killer's goal wasn't to control her."

Jiang Ruolan shifted her gaze from the corpse and slowly swept it across every corner of the bedroom.

The bottles and jars on the dressing table were neatly arranged, the wardrobe door was closed, and on the bedside table was a half-cold glass of boiled water and a half-open neighborhood office work manual.

The windows were closed, there were no signs of climbing on the windowsill, and the security bars were intact.

There were no signs of disturbance in the room, no signs of a struggle, and nothing had even been moved.

The deceased was wearing pajamas, her hair was neatly combed, and her makeup was still on.

She was attacked by someone she knew and trusted while she was completely relaxed and ready to fall asleep—or rather, killed by someone who could sneak into the bedroom without disturbing her.

"The killer slit her throat and only tied her hands behind her back and gagged her after she was already dead. These actions were not to control her, but to express some meaning."

"What does it mean?"

Director Tian asked.

Jiang Ruolan squatted down and carefully examined the nylon cable ties on the deceased's wrist.

The zip ties were white, tight, and deeply embedded in the skin, but showed no signs of struggle or abrasion—which perfectly matched the assessment that the person was bound after death.

The ends of the cable ties were neatly trimmed; they were industrial-grade cable ties, not the small ones commonly found in ordinary household toolboxes.

She said, "Tying her hands behind her back is an insult, and gagging her mouth is to shut her up. This murderer did these things after killing her to tell the people who found the scene that this person deserved to die, that she didn't deserve to speak, and that she didn't deserve to resist."

This was not an impulsive murder, nor was it a robbery or sexual assault that escalated into a killing. The perpetrator came prepared, carrying zip ties, a knife, and a towel; the target was clear, and the method was clean.

He must have scouted the place beforehand, knowing the layout of the house, the deceased's daily routine, and when her husband was away from home.

She knelt down beside the bed, her gaze fixed on the deceased's face.

Feng Wanqiu's eyes were half-open, her pupils already cloudy, but the remaining expression contained not fear, but rather a surprise that hadn't yet fully formed—

Her mouth was slightly open, the corners of her mouth turned down, and a fine line appeared at the corner of her eye due to the sudden tension in her skin.

The expression froze in the last moment of her life: she saw something that shocked her, and then the knife slit her throat.

Before she could even scream, blood had already rushed into her trachea.

"Old Zheng, take that towel out of her mouth and let me see it."

Jiang Ruolan said.

Old Zheng took a pair of long tweezers from his investigation kit, carefully pinched a corner of the towel, and slowly pulled it out of the deceased's mouth.

The towel was white, made of pure cotton, and was half-wet from being soaked in saliva and blood. When unfolded, it was clear that there were no brand labels on it; it was just an ordinary white towel, the kind you could buy in any supermarket.

Unlike the dark-colored blended handkerchief used by the murderer in the New Year's Eve case, this time it was the most ordinary white towel.

She put the towel back in the evidence bag, stood up, and her gaze was drawn to the open neighborhood office work manual on the bedside table.

The manual was an internally printed booklet with the words "Yian City Chengxi Subdistrict Office Work Manual" printed on the cover. The paper was rough and the layout was simple.

The manual was turned to page thirty-seven, titled "Job Responsibilities of the Urban Management Section".

Feng Wanqiu works in the Urban Management Section of the Subdistrict Office, where she is responsible for the most basic and trivial matters, such as the appearance of the city, environmental sanitation, and the management of street vendors.

Jiang Ruolan picked up the handbook and flipped through it, finding several paragraphs marked with red ballpoint pen underlines on page thirty-seven.

"Responsible for the management of the appearance and order of the main and secondary roads and back streets and alleys within the jurisdiction"; "Responsible for coordinating relevant departments to investigate and deal with illegal buildings"; "Responsible for the daily inspection and supervision of environmental sanitation within the jurisdiction".

The labeled content doesn't seem particularly special; it's just part of the daily work of urban management officers.

A female cadre from a neighborhood committee was looking through her work manual before bed and drawing a few lines on it when someone slit her throat, tied her hands behind her back, and gagged her.

Jiang Ruolan put the work manual into the evidence bag and said to Lu Zheng:

"Go to the subdistrict office to check Feng Wanqiu's recent work, especially the cases she has handled, the disputes she has mediated, and the people she has offended."

A street-level urban management officer deals with vendors, merchants, and owners of illegal structures every day; she's far more likely to offend people than you or I are.

Just as Lu Zheng was about to investigate, one of Director Tian's police officers knocked on the door frame, holding an evidence bag containing a cell phone.

He pointed outside and said, "The phone was found in the flower bed directly below the bedroom window. The phone case was a woman's pink and showed signs of being broken."

Technicians initially determined that the phone was thrown from a 13th-floor window. The phone is currently switched off, and the technical department is trying to turn it back on.

Jiang Ruolan took the evidence bag and carefully examined the cell phone through the transparent plastic.

It was an ordinary smartphone with several faded cartoon stickers on the back and a cracked corner on the screen.

If this was Feng Wanqiu's phone, why would the murderer throw it out the window after killing her?

There are two possibilities: either the phone contains clues about the killer, and the killer is afraid to take it—taking a phone would leave the risk of being tracked—so they have no choice but to destroy it;

Either the perpetrator deleted some content from the phone before throwing it away, and threw the phone to create the illusion that it was accidentally broken.

Regardless, once the data on this phone is recovered by the technical department, it will be the best evidence.

How long will data recovery take?

She asked.

"The technical department said it would take until this afternoon at the earliest. The phone's motherboard wasn't damaged, so most of the data should be recoverable."

The police officer answered.

At 3 p.m., the technical department delivered the recovered mobile phone data to the task force's meeting room.

Feng Wanqiu's phone contains a large number of work photos—street vendors occupying the road, piles of construction waste, damaged green belts, and various illegal constructions.

Each photo was labeled with a date and a brief description, and from December of last year to February of this year, a new batch was released almost every two or three days.

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